X-rated recordings from the 1890s

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 6/25/07 at 8:47am

Absolutely Fascinating...

"The commercial recordings on this CD are the only known copies that Comstock's men missed. They were preserved by long-time Edison Recording Manager Walter Miller and are now in the vault of the Edison National Historic Site. Scarcity and suppression have kept them silent for a century. They were stories told readily in the bar; yet they became legally actionable offenses when fixed in wax and played on a phonograph in that same bar. Brace yourself. Just because they are from the Victorian era does not mean they are tame by today's standards—far from it.
They are so indecent that Russell Hunting was imprisoned in 1896 for making and selling them. Up to that point Hunting had been doing a brisk trade selling his bawdy cylinders to the exhibitors on Coney Island who had certain "discriminating" customers. Although he recorded under pseudonyms such as "Charley Smith" and "Willy Fathand," his voice was so well-known through his "Casey" routines that he was identified as the creator by aural evidence alone. Hunting's recording career never fully recovered, and he left the U.S. in 1898 to make a fresh start in England.

A second collection of cylinders heard on this CD was made at home by an amateur who delighted in reciting obscene jokes, limericks, songs, poems, and stories into the horn. What this tells us about late Victorian America may be shocking to some—these are extremely racy recordings and are not for the faint-hearted. But for historians and folklorists, these are primary documents of a poorly studied tradition."

(All the audio samples linked below feature non-obscene excerpts)
Not just the Farmer's Daughter

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/25/07 at 8:58am

Seems like Spring was Awakening all over back then...